Twitter and the cryptocurrency information wars

By Leo Zhang

Jul 25, 2018

One of the most challenging parts of investing in the cryptocurrency market is discerning information from noise. The peer-to-peer and open-source nature of most of the cryptocurrency projects makes the communications in the space native to social media, not PR and traditional media. But this isn't a phenomenon that is unique to cryptocurrency; prominent corporate managers are using social media to bend the rules in equity markets, too.

"When Musk tweets, the big bulge bracket banks, the ones with billions of dollars under management, or more than 10,000 employees, get the exact same information as me, the guy who moved to New York City a year ago, manages his own account, and lives in an apartment the size of some closets."

Technical Updates

"Grin is taking a different approach from both of these projects. Grin has a linear supply schedule, meaning that inflation as a percentage of existing supply is very high early on but gradually lowers over time, approaching zero percent but never actually reaching that. Its overall supply is unlimited, with a tail emission that will continue in perpetuity. This makes it less of a digital gold competitor and more of an attempt at being an actual currency."

"Virtually all of the currently available top DApps were created in order to redistribute the surplus of crypto and make more intelligent people somewhat richer, and vice-versa, hence the popularity of pyramids and pay-to-win-games. Numerous mediocre CryptoKitties clones and poorly drawn NFT-based 'games' also confirm this theory."

"In this case, an unauthenticated, remote attacker within the range of targeted devices during the pairing process can launch a man-in-the-middle attack to obtain the cryptographic key used by the device, allowing them to potentially snoop on supposedly encrypted device communication to steal data going over-the-air, and inject malware."

"I think that technology ultimately progresses because of people and the deepening of the process knowledge they possess. I view the creation of new tools and IP as certifications that we’ve accumulated process knowledge. Instead of seeing tools and IP as the ultimate ends of technological progress, I’d like to view them as milestones in the training of better scientists, engineers, and technicians."

News & Commentary

"Pretending tokens are equity-like differentiates their token from Bitcoin. Instead of appealing to the monetary nature, a whitepaper can propose notions that appeal to traditional equity investors. But really, all unpegged cryptocurrencies are money and need to be understood that way."